


as long as we exist, we triumph

by transjewdean



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Backstory, Canon Gay Character, Gen, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Pre-Canon, almost canon compliant, james flint backstory, the sea as a character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-19
Updated: 2020-11-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:22:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27635386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/transjewdean/pseuds/transjewdean
Summary: James has always loved the sea, ever since he was a child. His mother used to say that the sea brought him to her – meaning, of course, his father who was an Irish sailor, brought to Portsmouth on a ship and taken away again, never to return – and that one day, the sea would take him back.A backstory, of sorts, of James McGraw and his early life, before exile, before Nassau, before the birth of Captain Flint.Title fromthis articleby Danielle Hilborn.
Relationships: Captain Flint | James McGraw/Thomas Hamilton
Comments: 4
Kudos: 24





	as long as we exist, we triumph

James has always loved the sea, ever since he was a child. His mother used to say that the sea brought him to her – meaning, of course, his father who was an Irish sailor, brought to Portsmouth on a ship and taken away again, never to return – and that one day, the sea would take him back.

“She’s a jealous mistress, James,” mother would say while combing his hair, “she may allow you a few transgressions in your life, but mark me, one day she will take you and never let you go again.” Then she would kiss his forehead gently and they would both pretend that she wasn’t weeping. Though she was, he knew, for him and for his father in equal measure.

Despite her warnings, he never could stay away from the sea; every chance he got, he would run away from their small home – shared with his grandparents – and his grandfather’s workshop, to watch the great ships in the harbour or stand on the cliffs outside of town, tasting the salt on his lips, with his hair whipping around his face in the harsh wind, looking out at the dark sea. In those moments there would be a peculiar longing in his chest, heavy and desperate, like his heart had turned to stone.

“You are like your father,” his grandmother says when he comes back, clothes drenched with seawater and with a wild joy in his eyes, “if we are not careful, you will drift away from us.”

She dies when he is nine years old, and his grandfather follows her soon after. After the funerals, his mother holds him through the night, and he knows she is afraid that he will leave her too.

He doesn’t want to – doesn’t think so, at least – but the longing in his chest grows, it’s like a song that he can hear all the time, calling him to the sea, and he spends less and less time in his mother’s house.

Mother gets sick when he’s twelve, spends most of her time in bed, wheezing and coughing up blood, her eyes glazed over with fever, her forehead covered in a thin sheen of sweat. She gets worse, not slowly but from minute to minute, it seems, and he sits with her day and night until it finally ends.

The last thing she says to him is, “find an anchor, James. I was your father’s, for a little while. Find someone to be your anchor, so you don’t drown.”

Three days after the funeral, he joins the navy.

Admiral Hennessey takes a liking to him, makes him a midshipman and later an officer. And James loves the navy – not for how hard or how strict it is but because every morning he wakes up with the smell of the sea in his nostril and every night he goes to sleep with the feel of saltwater in his hair and on his face. He can’t imagine ever loving a human being the way he loves the sea.

When he is twenty-three, he is thrown overboard in a storm and he is certain that this is the end – the sea has decided to take him back now. But he survives; he is pulled out of the water and though he vomits and coughs up water, and feels that he will die, he doesn’t.

His mother’s words return to him then.

“One day she will take you and never let you go again.”

“Find someone to be your anchor, so you don’t drown.”

He looks for an anchor, for someone that makes the song of the sea in his heart go quiet, but he doesn’t know where to look. Or rather, he does know, only the where frightens him to his core. Because he has never looked at a woman the way he knows other men do; he might notice a woman’s beauty, even be delighted by the sight, but it never makes his blood boil or his fingers itch. It doesn’t make his lips tingle, or his cock harden.

Men, however. He can’t help himself though he knows it’s wrong; he notices the other men on the ships, hardened men with rough hands and hard muscles. Notices the way their hair curls in the sunlight, the way their cheeks grow red when they drink.

He dreams about them, about their big hands on his shoulders, in his hair, on his chest, on his cock. Dreams of mouths and imagines what kissing someone with a beard would feel like.

But it’s wrong. He knows it is. Everything he’s ever been told says that this desire of his is unnatural, ungodly. So, he locks it up; puts it into a little box and stows it away in a corner of his mind.

And he remembers again his mother’s words: “One day she will take you and never let you go again.” She had said it with such certainty that he never doubts it, even for a second.

Not until he meets Thomas.

Thomas is like no one else James has ever known. Objectively, he is not the most handsome man in the world, and yet James burns for him in a way he never has for another. And it’s not just carnal desire; he wants to know Thomas, be privy to his innermost thoughts, spend quiet days in bed with him.

He wants it all and for a time, he gets to have it.

He gets to have Thomas, in the quiet lovely mornings, in the dark and desperate evenings; gets to kiss him, gets to touch him, gets to know the most private parts of him – and he gets to be known in return.

For the first time since he can remember, James’ heart doesn’t cry out for the sea in the quiet moments; when he rests in Thomas’ arms, it beats only with quiet contentment.

Later, when he thinks back on that year, it will seem to him as one, long, golden afternoon.

His mother’s words are forgotten for a time. What can the sea do to him, after all, when he stays on the land with Thomas?

He should have known better, he thinks bitterly as he and Miranda are herded onto the ship that will take them to New Providence Island. The sea will get what she wants, no matter what and there is nothing he can do to stop her.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed it!
> 
> Hit me up on [tumblr](https://www.transjohnsilver.tumblr.com)


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